“You sell ’em out; you turn over the whole thing—the city, its property, and its people—to Business, to the big fellows; to the business leaders of the people. You deliver, not only franchises, privileges, private rights and public properties, and values, Boss: you—all of you together—have delivered the government itself to these men, so that today this city, this State, and the national government represent, normally, not the people, not the great mass of common folk, who need protection, but—Business; preferably bad business; privileged business; a class; a privileged class.”
He had sunk back among the pillows, his eyes closed, his fingers still. I sounded him.
“That’s the system,” I repeated. “It’s an organization of social treason, and the political boss is the chief traitor. It couldn’t stand without the submission of the people; the real bosses have to get that. They can’t buy the people—too many of them; so they buy the people’s leaders, and the disloyalty of the political boss is the key to the whole thing.”
These was no response. I plumbed him again.
“And you—you believe in loyalty, Boss,” I said—“in being true to your own.” His eyes opened. “That’s your virtue, you say, and you said, too, that you have practiced it.”
“Don’t,” he murmured.
A Ballad of Dead Girls
By Dana Burnet
(American poet, born 1888)